The point of parallel imports of pharmaceuticals is arbitrage between
countries with different prices. For several years, an important issue in the
European Union (EU) has been the evident conflict between differing price
regulations in the member states, on the one hand, and the consequences of
parallel trade, on the other. In the EU, so long as the manufacturer has placed
the good on the market voluntarily, the principle of free movement of goods
allows individuals, or firms within the EU to trade goods across borders,
without the consent of the producer. In this context, the authors study the
effects of parallel trade in the pharmaceutical industry. They develop a model
in which an original manufacturer competes in its home market with
parallel-importing firms. The two key hypotheses in their theoretical analysis
are these: First, if the potential for parallel imports is unlimited, the
manufacturer chooses deterrence, and international prices converge. Second, with
endogenously limited arbitrage, the manufacturing firm accommodates, and the
price in the home market falls as the volume of parallel trade rises. The
authors test their hypotheses on data from the Swedish market for 1995-98.
Before 1995, Sweden prohibited parallel imports of pharmaceutical products, but
entry into the EU, on January 1, 1995, required Sweden to allow them. Simple
empirical tests favor the accommodation hypothesis with a time lag. Using data
from Sweden, the authors find that the prices of drugs, subject to competition
from parallel imports increased less than those for other drugs between 1995 and
1998. Roughly, three-fourths of this effect can be attributed to the lower
prices of parallel imports, and one-fourth to lower prices charged by the
manufacturing firm. Econometric analysis finds that rents to parallel importers
(or resource costs in parallel trade) could be more than the gain to consumers
from lower prices.